


not your little mercenary group anymore dad

by Kalgalen



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Angst/Comfort, Bring! Our! Water dad! Back!!!, Found Family, Gen, Spoilers up to 116
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 18:18:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17709131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalgalen/pseuds/Kalgalen
Summary: Zolf comes back, and things have changed more than he thought they would.





	not your little mercenary group anymore dad

**Author's Note:**

  * For [intearsaboutrobots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intearsaboutrobots/gifts).



> I tried telling Jude about how Zolf would be proud of how grown-up the kids have become but then they made it sad......

Zolf wasn't sure of the state he'd expected to find his team once he joined them again, but it certainly was not it.

There are new faces, for a start; two paladins, though that's where their similarities stop. One is an orc, the other’s a goblin. One greets him with a handshake and kind words, the other with narrowed eyes and a silent nod. Bertie's absence is glaringly obvious, too; he learns what happened in Prague from Hamid as they share a drink in a tavern the halfling would never have accepted to set foot in in the past. Zolf is hardly heartbroken to hear of the knight’s downfall, but he can't help but feel a twinge of guilt when Hamid tells him about the necromancer cursing him - and killing his sister. Hamid chokes up a bit as he recounts the events, but his eyes stay locked, unblinking and unseeing, on the cup clutched in his hands. Zolf knows all-too-well the pain of losing a sibling, and he would never have wished it on the mage, even during their louder arguments. He feels like he should have been here to prevent it, here to _help_ instead of taking off on a personal quest that had brought more questions than answers. He'd promised Sasha he'd have their back, right when it had all started; he'd been far too quick to forget that vow.

He wants to reach out, put a hand on Hamid’s shoulder, say he's sorry. Apologies don't bring the dead back, though; he doesn't do anything.

“We saw Barett a couple of weeks ago,” Sasha says out of nowhere, a few days after he joined them again. They've set up camp on the side of a mountain somewhere in Central Africa (teleportation spell’s gone wrong, and their ride isn't answering his… stone? Gods, Zolf has a lot of catching-up to do.) Nothing in their dark and dusty surroundings seems to have prompted Sasha’s sudden announcement, and Zolf glances at the thief, who looks uncharacteristically gleeful.

“Oh?” Zolf says, poking at the fire Hamid just lit with a flick of his fingers. “What is he up to these days?”

“Prison. Probably.” She shrugs, stretches her legs in front of her. “I don't really care, you know? Like, as long as he can't lurk behind my back… I'm happy.”

And she _does_ look happy, Zolf realizes. She looks relaxed and confident, wriggling her fingers at the crackling flames - so different from the slinking shadow he'd first met it's hard to believe they're the same person.

“He wasn't doing too great last time we saw him,” she continues. “Cheered me up quite a lot.”

“What- how did you even get your hands on him? In _Damascus?_ ”

Sasha makes an “I-don’t-know” noise. “Gift from a friend, apparently? Which was convenient, ‘cause we had questions for him about his weird tentacle-faced buddies.”

“And he just… answered?”

Sasha snorts. “ _Ha,_ not really. But Hamid convinced him to talk. He got _persuasive_ while you were away, you know.”

Zolf is about to ask how, exactly, the halfling could get more eloquent, but then he catches the satisfied grin on Hamid’s face as the tip of his fingers stretches into claws, and the pieces fall into place.

“Uh.” Zolf isn't sure how to feel about the polite, dainty halfling having apparently discovered torture was not such a bad thing after all. In the end, he just shrugs. “Sure hope you won't tell me not to drown people anymore, then.”

Hamid makes a face. “Although I am willing to admit sometimes violence is unavoidable, there's a difference between hurting bad people for information and _killing_ them.”

Sasha makes a non-committal noise. The paladin of Aphrodite stops cleaning her axe to declare, serious as a grave:

“There is.” Before Hamid can enjoy his small victory, she adds: “Torture is worse. Ritual sacrifices represent an important offering to some gods, and it is simply part of the worship. There's always another way to convince people, though.”

“Oh yes,” Hamid mutter under his breath. “Because you are so good at this.”

Zolf snorts; from the other side of the fire, the paladin thankfully doesn't hear them.

* * *

There's an easy dynamic among the new group; while the team Zolf had led had been a nest of brewing tensions barely held together by a certain taste for money, the current atmosphere hints at a genuine desire to save the world out of actual selflessness instead of greed. Even Sasha manages to keep her fingers under control as they clear yet another weapon cache; her eyes glint brighter with each new crate they open - alchemist fire, adamantine blades, delicate explosive mechanisms - but her hands remain to her side, and her pockets stray empty. Zolf doesn't miss the way she ever-so-slightly brightens up when Grizzop pats her elbow approvingly.

He feels guilty about his lack of faith, but he never would have imagined Hamid could fill his boots when he'd left; leading a mercenary group required a certain ruthlessness he was convinced the halfling could never muster, as hard as he might want to try. He comes to realize how wrong he was as he watches from the sidelines Hamid dealing with government officials and angry merchants alike, wielding honeyed compliments and unquestionably reasonable suggestions in a way Zolf never could. He's remained the same cordial diplomat Zolf had first met; but there's steel behind his eyes now. _Move, or I'll make you move._

Looks like he inherited some of his father's steadfastness after all.

Seeing his former recruits so competent and accomplished shouldn't make him feel like he failed, somehow - if anything, he should be _proud_ for being the one to bring them into the business. As it is, he can't help but think - _damn, they progressed so much without me_. They're not only managing - they are thriving. What if Zolf was the reason they couldn't do it before? What if him coming back meant their growth would be stilled again? It's not like he's any real use sticking with them anyway; Hamid makes a good leader, and they have with them no one healer, but two. Hard not to feel superfluous, really.

He tells them as much after a couple of weeks of travelling with the new group. He's drawn his conclusions, and he isn't hurt by them - because, really, him having outlived his usefulness among them is only his own fault.And that's alright! They're doing great, but he should move on now.

Unsurprisingly enough, because he's as contradictory as Zolf remembers - that hasn't changed, just his luck - Hamid disagrees.

"What do you mean, you're leaving? You can't leave! You just came back!"

Zolf sighs, and braces for a fight. He wrestles with the straps of his pack for a second, more as a way to stall for time rather than by real necessity.

"I just came back, and now I'm leaving. This is still a decision I can take, last time I checked."

He's not looking at Hamid, but he knows the halfling is standing as tall as he can, rigid with righteous outrage. Good. If he's angry he won't try to convince Zolf to stay with as much conviction.

"Of course you can! But still, I think we deserve an explanation?"

Zolf's never been a fan of that demanding tone; when he finally looks up at Hamid, it's with a frosty glare and a tight jaw.

"Oh, do you now?"

Sasha, still seated near the remains of the campfire, has stopped playing with her dagger. The two paladins say something about going to fill their water-skins, and wisely slip away. Hamid seems to slightly cool under Zolf's stare, but he doesn't yield.

“Well - yes,” he says softly, with this placating inflection he uses to get people to go easy on him - Zolf knows his tactics though, he knows better than to let himself be played. “You've been gone for months, Zolf. I wrote you. No answers. And when you finally come back, it's only to leave again? Did we do something wrong?”

 _Don't let him get to you,_ Zolf reminds himself. It really shouldn't be that hard, since he knows what to expect, but as it turns out he's not that immune to Hamid’s pleading eyes when he's feeling more guilty than furious. How does the halfling even manage to convey the appearance of an old dog left out in the rain when they're in the middle of such an arid landscape _?_ What kind of magic _is that?_

“No. You didn't- I just-” Zolf sighs, considers lying for a fraction of second. He could tell them he's received a message from Wilde, about some urgent mission - it wouldn't hold for long, though. He ends up deciding to confess to as much of the truth as he can without sounding like a sad old dwarf. “Look, you’ve got it under control, okay? You don't actually need me anymore to,” Zolf stammers, “to tell you what to do, or- or lead you-”

“To be fair,” Sasha pipes up, attempting to sound comforting, “we never really needed you as a leader once the whole uncovering-a-global-conspiracy thing started. What?”

Hamid is wincing, trying and failing to discreetly signal her to stop talking. She looks a bit embarrassed when she gets the message, then shrugs and mumbles into her scarf:

“I'm just saying. We're deciding as a team.”

“As a team, yes” Hamid echoes, then turns back to Zolf. “We're a team, aren't we, Zolf? You brought us together-”

“That was months ago! None of you knew anything about the job then! And, may I remind you, the job back then consisted of crowd-control and guarding, not saving the goddamn world!” So much for staying calm and inflexible. He forces himself to take a deep breath, and starts again, calmer. “I'm not cut out for that, alright? You guys are. I can't even pretend I could stay as a medic,” he says with a humorless chuckle as he gestures toward the rocky outcrop behind which the paladins have disappeared. “You've got that covered.”

Sasha has stood up to place herself next to a very dismayed-looking Hamid, and she's giving him the suspicious squint she usually directs at particularly complicated traps.

“Zolf,” she says, eyebrows drawn tight, “are you jealous?”

“What?” he squeaks. He clears his throat in an attempt to get his voice back under control, then tries again: “What? No. Why would I be- I just don't think you need me around anymore.”

“You keep talking about  _need_ ,” cuts Hamid. “It's not about needing anything. We missed you.”

His voice is as silky as one of his neckties, but to Zolf it feels like a noose dropping around his neck. Then Sasha tilts her head, echoes Hamid (“We missed you, Zolf, we really did”) and the metaphorical rope is pulled taut.

“Oh,” is all he manages to answer. It comes out embarrassingly strangled.

"You don't have to stay if you don't want to, obviously," Hamid says softly, taking a step in his direction. As if she were his long shadow, Sasha follows closely. "We'd like you to, though."

Zolf doesn't currently trust himself to speak without his voice breaking, so he shrugs in acceptance - and, if he hugs back when Hamid throws his arms around him, it's only because the kid looks like he could use a hug.

* * *

"Alright, are they done now? Can we go back?" Grizzop asks, beating an impatient rhythm on the water-skin strapped to his side. Next to him, Azu produces a strange noise, halfway between a tiny squeal of happiness and a sob, and she wipes a tear from the corner of her eye as she watches their three companions pile into a tight embrace.

"Not - not now, Grizzop." She sniffles, smiling at the sight of a strong friendship rekindled; she can feel Aphrodite's warmth over them, and her own heart feels tight in her chest. "Not now. Give them some time."

The other paladin sighs, and sits down in the dust. This could take a while.


End file.
